


shines through the light

by mahariels



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Coma, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Force-Sensitive Finn, Post-Movie(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>finn and rey slip through each others' dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shines through the light

**Author's Note:**

> i know it's kind of ambiguous whether or not finn is force-sensitive. i'm hoping he is, but i'm also fully prepared to get jossed next year, hah.

At first, in the darkness, he can hear only the sound of Ren's lightsaber buzzing to life and searing into his skin. 

Over, and over, and over again.

*

It's not until FN-2187 realizes the noise is repeating and that the exact note of the first _buzz_  is the same every time, that he's able to shock himself out of the loop. He looks down. He's not in pain. He's wearing his combat armor, shining white in the dim. Unbroken, unbloodied. 

No. That's wrong. 

He's not a stormtrooper anymore and the last time he saw that particular helmet it was painted red with Slip's blood and smudged with the sand of Jakku.

"This isn't right," Finn says. His voice echoes. It doesn't sound like him. His name is Finn. His name is _Finn_. And he says it again, more to convince himself than anything. " _This isn't right_."

 *

In the First Order, _time_ is all important on the small scale and mutable on a large scale. Every day is broken down into fifteen minute increments. You know exactly where you are at any given time because if you're _not_ there, you're in a hell of a lot of trouble and Captain Phasma will hear about it. But the days themselves, so alike and never-ending, marching one after the other, blend together. 

He doesn't know when or where he is. 

"Hello?" he screams into the dark. " _HELLO_?"

Finn isn't surprised when no one answers. He feels almost as empty as the hollowed-out corners of his memory, the ragged edges the Order tries to smooth away from all of their troopers, with varying degrees of success. He's still _Finn_ , but there are holes that should be filled in, that haven't been for years.

He starts walking.

*

The darkness becomes so bright as to blind him. He can feel the sand whipping his face, the heat burning the soles of his boots. It can't be real, because he's left Jakku and there's no way he could have made it back this way. Is there?

It doesn't feel like the last time he walked through this desert and he remembers that all too well. The heat and the all-consuming thirst, the frustration of seeing caravans of traders pass him by, laughing. He feels no thirst, no exhaustion. He walks towards a speck in the distance, compelled in that direction by a pull beyond his understanding.

The speck grows larger. It's the crushed frame of an AT-AT, an old model the Order hasn't used in years. Not since the war. His brain breaks it down into lists of parts, schematics. They were drilled in them anyway, despite their obsolescence. Know your weapons. Learn from the mistakes. Move on. He had always felt the same way, one moving part to be replaced as needed. Expendable.

It's Jakku, but it's not Jakku. He's walked this path before, but there are ruins he doesn't recognize. The shape of the dunes aren't right. The warp of time and space distorts things and he's fairly sure he's walked six or seven kilometers in a single step.

A girl sits in front of the crumbled skeleton. She's just a kid, seven or eight, maybe. She's furiously scrubbing the filth of planet from the equally twisted carcass of an ancient MD type droid. The wind stills and with it the whipping sand; she lifts the goggles from her eyes and--

" _Rey_?"

The child looks up at him, no recognition in her eyes at first. Then something flickers, and her high, piping voice says, "Finn? What are you doing in my _dream_? Are you all right? Are you alive--"

Rey vanishes. Jakku vanishes. 

*

This is her nightmare, now: a dark field of battle. Rain and shattered trees. Screams and blood, and the sound of a lightsaber Finn knows all too well now.

Rey is a child amidst it, her eyes wide and terrified.

Someone screams in the background--"no!"--and Rey runs, her tiny feet slipping in the muck.

She falls to her feet before him.

He crouches down to look her in the eye. "Rey. It's okay. It's a dream. You're okay."

"Finn? How?"

But there is nothing.

*

He opens his eyes and immediately recognizes the lush greenery of Takodana and the chaos that had destroyed it, the blasters and explosions and the scream of TIE fighters overhead.

Kylo Ren is carrying Rey towards his ship, but this is wrong. Instead of lying unconscious in Ren's arms, Rey is fighting back with everything she's got, her fists slamming Ren in the mask, the chest, screaming and kicking, determined to escape despite the futility of the endeavor. 

He runs toward them as fast as he can. The lightsaber in his hand is glowing, though a moment ago, he hadn't been holding it. "Rey!"

"Finn!" She reaches for him.

Takodana is gone, and so is Finn.

*

"Finn?" The voice is familiar. A woman's voice, unmodulated by a helmet's breathing vents. He doesn't know why he'd remember such a thing. Such a person. " _Finn_."

He's back in the dark again, re-living the awful moment when his strength deserted him and Ren's lightsaber stabbed through his spine. Over, and over, and over.

" _Finn_ ," the voice repeats insistently. "Finn, look at me."

It stops.

He opens his eyes. 

He's sitting in a small section of the troop quarters on the _Finalizer_. They're small and sparse, completely utilitarian columns of cots. He shares the bed with another trooper, FN-2155, and they sleep in shifts. When FN-2187 is on duty, FN-2155 sleeps. When FN-2155 is on duty, FN-2187 sleeps. Or tries to sleep. These days, 87 spends more time staring at the ceiling and worrying about Slip. About his own future and the choices he'll have to make. He's sitting on the bed, so it must be during the night shift.

He's still wearing his armor and helmet. This is one of the only places they're allowed not to wear them and even then, it feels strange taking the thing off. You never know who's watching, who'll report you back to the Captain for an infraction, imagined or otherwise.

"Finn!"

He looks up. Rey is standing in the middle of the trooper quarters, wearing gray clothes that are unfamiliar to him, her face creased with worry. "Finn!"

"Rey?" He looks down. He's Finn. He's Finn, not FN-2187. This is a dream. He escaped from the _Finalizer_  with Poe and-- "What are you--"

She moves forward and her hands fumble at the catches of his helmet, surprisingly clumsy considering. When he doesn't resist she pulls it off, and the air stings cold against his sweaty face. "Are you all right? I didn't mean to leave you, but I had to find L--" 

"Are _you_ all right?" he demands, reaching up to touch her, to see if she's real because he doesn't entirely believe this himself. "Where did you--"

"I'm fine," she says impatiently, batting away his hands. "You don't need to-- I'm-- Finn, do you _realize_  what this means?"

"I've never been more confused in my damned life," Finn says. It's honest, at least. "I'm dreaming, but I have no idea what's _happening_."

" _I'm_  dreaming." She takes his hands, voluntarily, and that's how he _knows_  he's dreaming. Even in the dream, her fingers are warm and dry in his own, callused from years of hard work. "And we're talking. And you found me, on Jakku and Takodana. And I found _you_ here."

"That sounds pretty impossible." To his own ears, his voice sounds surprisingly calm and level, when inside his stomach is twisting in knots. What's going on? Why can't he wake up? Why are they trapped in the _Finalizer_ and why hasn't anyone come after them? 

"You're--" Rey starts, but her face stretches grotesquely into a screaming mask as the dream begins to twist and fade, as pain lances through his spine again.

"Rey, wait, damnit--"

*

  
_This_ dream is the worst. 

All of his conditioning screams at him that it's wrong, that it's _wrong_ , and he's going to be punished for remembering. Sent for re-evaluation and a thorough mind wipe. Someone will tell Phasma and that will be the end of him, everything that makes him _him,_ gone, and he won't even know it when it's over.

The memory isn't really a memory so much as it's an immutable fact folded into the heart of him, from years and years ago. He is small and helpless as a baby. He can smell the room so strongly it almost chokes him--caf, wood burning. Something cooking, savory, on the stove. A woman's warm hands rocking him, a low voice singing in his ear. Murmuring a name.

He's not that person. He is FN-2187. He has always been FN-2187.

Not FN-2187. Finn. He's _Finn_. 

He forces his eyes open, but there's only darkness.

*

This time, he's determined he's going to find her, and sithspawn take the endless cycle of waking into another dream or nightmare, the endless cycle of pain and throwing it off. He's going to find an answer and an escape, or at the very least, figure out where and when the hell he _is_.

It's strange, this world between waking and dreaming. Sometimes it molds itself to his will, providing him a tantalizing glimpse of-- _something_ , something he's been missing for kriffing years--and sometimes it's just a morass of black, or twisting images that make no sense. The more he walks, the more he _focuses_ , the easier it gets.

He tracks her again to Jakku, but this time he recognizes her as the Rey he knows (and _cares_  for, his brain supplies carefully). Nineteen, implacable, and sun-weathered. She's sitting in front of a board that has thousands of check marks scratched into it, staring up at it with an unreadable expression on her face. He can see the checks are multiplying themselves without her hand to add to them: one after another, scrolling into infinity as she stares. Space warps around them: they reach up, endlessly high, despite the confines of the walker's hull.

"Hi," he says.

She looks over her shoulder at him, and smiles, though the smile seems a little sad. "Welcome to my humble home. I'd offer you some food, but I think we're both pretty tired of synth rations, huh?"

He shudders. "If I never have to eat synthsust again, I'll die a happy man."

"Well, try not to die just yet."

"I've been pretty good at that so far," Finn says with a casual shrug. "Our friend in the bucket tried his damnedest, and look where that got him."

Rey sounds surprised to laugh at that, the gallows humor that got FN-2187 and his friends through years of training and indoctrination, but her voice is solemn when she speaks. "It was a close thing for both of us, in more than one way."

Finn watches the check marks--she must have been keeping track of time, but he doesn't know what for--continue to scroll as they talk. Never-ending. "Where are you, Rey?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she says.

Finn remembers Solo telling them _that's not how the Force works!_  But in some ways, he thinks the man was only half-right. "You found him!" So they'd done it after all, despite the loss.

"I'm _training_  with him," Rey replies.

"You're _what_?"

*

"We have to stop meeting like this," he tells her, with false cheer. He's been asleep for years, it seems, and he's exhausted. At least this time he's not wearing his armor, just the black undersuit and Poe's jacket, the only things he truly owns.

This is one of her dreams, a beautiful planet of green and blue ocean. She's sitting at the highest point of the island, her legs folded beneath her and forced calm on her face. "You're still in a coma," she says. "Luke--Master Skywalker--says I'm not ready to try to help you..."

"So this is where you're training, huh," he says, staring out at the ocean, because he doesn't want to think too hard about the fact that he's in a kriffing  _coma_. He sits down next to her. The stone is cold under him. "Looks serene. Bet it's very relaxing. You must be enjoying the vacation."

Rey snorts indelicately. "That's one way of putting it." They sit quiet for a long moment, with only the sound of the waves crashing on the rock beneath them. "I wish you were here."

"I'd've come with you if I could," he says.

"I know," Rey says, with a small, sideways smile that he's pretty sure only he's seen. "You will one day, I think."

"Is this some kind of kriffing Jedi mind trick?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, Finn. There's no way you'd be able to find me, or that we'd be able to talk like this unless you're--"

"Hold up," he says. "No. No."

"--you're Force-sensitive."

"No," Finn says. "It's not possible. I'm a stormtrooper. Not a--"

"A Jedi? Of course you're not. Not yet."

"I can't," he says, again. He hates the way his voice sounds, unsure, ragged.

"Why not?" her voice has that same challenging edge that it did the first time they met, back on Jakku. Back when she thought he'd stolen Poe's coat.

"Damn it, Rey. I'm still trying to get used to the idea of myself as a person, as a name, not a number or a weapon. It's too much, I  _can't_ \--"

She reaches for him, her hands fisted in the cloth of his shirt. "You can. You will.  _Come with me._ "

Well that's not damned  _fair._ He wrenches away from her, from her dream, and for the first time, retreats.

*

FN-2187 marches down the ramp of the troop transport, with Zeroes at his side and Nines and Slip behind them. Even through the filters of his helmet he can smell the hot desert air, acrid and tinged with oil and sweat. 

He knows what's coming, and dread pools in the pit of his stomach. He's going to make that choice again, because he can't possibly make another one. They've already made their choices: Zeroes and Nines are in too deep. They're _believers._ And Slip--he tried, he fired at the villagers in the sim without compunction, he fought as best he could in practices. But that's not going to save him.

When Slip dies, this time, FN-2187 crouches down next to him and says what he'd wanted to say the first time. "I'm sorry, Slip. I'm sorry." For not knowing how to stand up to Phasma. For inaction. For Slip's own mistakes. He reaches down to take the helmet off, to see his friend one last time.

Rey's bloodied face stares up at him.

"No," Finn says, and runs. Not away. Not again. Towards.

*

Finn finds her again by accident on D'Qar, in the infirmary. Opens his eyes to find her sitting by his bedside, watching him with those sharp brown eyes. For a moment he's not sure if this is a dream, or if it's real. He remembers D'Qar so clearly, the smell of foliage and the chirps and howls of small woodland creatures off of the base, and it's normal enough that for a second he thinks he might actually have jolted himself free. Rey is curled up in the chair, fiddling with small piece of broken machinery in her hands. He finds it kind of endearing that she's not reading, still working even in her downtime. 

"I found you again," she says, putting the broken machine down on a table. "I'm not sure if you can actually hide."

"I wasn't trying to hide. Not this time."

"No?" she says.

He sits up and meets her curious gaze. "You asked me to come with you."

"I did."

"I _will_."

He knows it's a dream because when she throws herself at him, time slows, moves strangely. One moment she's sitting, the next she's in his arms, and he thinks of the check marks, the long nights waiting for someone who'd never come. He thinks of his own long nights of doubt and loneliness and when she lifts her head to look at him, he moves on adrenaline the way he's been moving for the last few months of his life, and kisses her.

He half expects her to slap him, but instead, her mouth opens and she kisses him back, grabbing him roughly by the shirt collar so he can't pull away, her other hand reaching up to touch the side of his face, like she can't quite believe it. She kisses him exactly like she does everything else, intent, full of purpose. He knows it's a dream, because she tastes like the sea. He's glad they're sitting because his knees are a little weak.

When she pulls back for a breath, she says, " _Find me_ ," and the dream fades, slipping through his grasping fingers.

*

Finn opens his eyes, and finds a chaos of beeping and screaming med droids (one is fluting anxiously, "No, Master Finn, you can't--) and struggles to sit up. It's slow going and everything in his body screams in protest; that's not surprising, he's pretty sure that's what's bound to happen when you take a lightsaber through the chest. 

But for the first time in what seems like a long time, he knows exactly who he is and what he needs to do. 

And that's a hell of a start.


End file.
